"I'm the Dad My Father Wasn't"

To find his own parenting voice, James Braly had to block out his father and listen only to his son.

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May 21, 2011

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I'm in front of my house, dressed like a 7-year-old San Francisco Giant, waiting for my dad to drive me to the game. (He lost custody of me — and any desire to ring our doorbell again — in my parents' divorce.)

Up rolls a yellow dune buggy, a loaner from the car dealership where he works. An hour later, we're in our seats... in Oakland. It turns out he bought tickets to the A's versus the Los Angeles Dodgers. I'm the only San Francisco Giant for 30 miles.

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But I don't say, "Dad, you told me it was a Giants game!" Before he started selling cars, my father flew Air Force bombers in the Korean War. He once told me he came back from a mission and a cook screwed up his eggs — some white wasn't mixed with the yellow, so he mixed it up with the cook. "If I can drop bombs at night, that meathead should be able to scramble eggs!" He didn't have patience for imperfections, even his own. Mistakes were a weakness, so I knew mentioning his would ruin our day.

But one upside of a bitter divorce is that you always get a gift from the parent who lost the custody battle. So he buys me an A's hat, and at least my head blends in.

Nine innings later, we're driving home. The top's down, I've got a new hat, I feel good — until it flies off. I want to scream, "My hat!" to my dad, who hasn't noticed (he drives like he flies, oblivious to the copilot). But my words get trapped. God knows what he'd say to me for not thinking to take it off before getting into a convertible. So I turn around and look out the back as it rolls away.

One downside of a bitter divorce is that when you lose a present from the parent who only sees you every other weekend, you have even less to hold on to.

Decades later, when my own son, Julian, is 4, we're on vacation, and by some odd coincidence, we wind up crossing a bay in a little yellow pedal boat called Dune Bug.

Suddenly Julian screams, "My hat!" His first real cap, which I'd bought him for the trip. Time slows: the hat arcing toward the water, my hand closing on it, lifting it like Willie Mays. "Whoa!" says Julian. "That was close."

"That was close!" I repeat, laughing, delighted that he has the confidence to tell me what I was too afraid to tell my own father. I think, What a good dad I am!

That night, he wears the cap to sleep. And I lie in bed replaying the catch like a highlight reel. Then Julian calls me from the bathroom. He's learning how to aim. I'm his coach. I walk in.

He misses.

My dad's tight-wound voice pops into my head (as it does more often than I care to admit), saying, "If I can drop bombs at night, that little meathead should be able to hit the toilet!"

Julian jerks his head to see my reaction. It's like looking at me looking at my dad — as if there are three of us in that bathroom. And after a deep, personality-integrating breath, I say, "That's okay, Julian. We can clean it up." Julian's face brightens. "Yeah!" he says, standing under his baseball cap. "That's okay. We can clean it up." Like together we just invented the idea that it's all right to make mistakes — a beautiful thing to hear your little boy tell you, and to hear you telling yourself.

James Braly is the author of Life in a Marital Institution, a forthcoming memoir from St. Martin's Press and a one-man show presented by Meredith Vieira Productions.